"Out of His Head: The Sound of Phil Spector" by Richard Williams (1972)

I bought this original 1972 paperback simply because I liked the ancient owner of the second-hand bookshop and even brought him some food from a fresh market nearby - he must be in his 80s and this place is his universe, loved everything about it. Than it turned out that the book itself actually excellent! Obviously this is from 1972 and this is the best thing about it - later books about Spector focus too much about scandals and the descent into the madness, but this little book is all about the music and the best thing about it might be that it was written while Spector was still working - it is a close look at the music industry circa 1972, with recently disbanded Beatles working closely with Spector and at that point he was still not completely manic, but respected producer instead.

One interesting thing that Williams notes is how before Spector, producers were really in the background - while he was preceded by some important names like John Hammond, George Goldner and Sam Phillips, it was Spector who marketed his records like the latest, newest product by Phil Spector - to my knowledge, nobody else did it before and surprisingly (from our perspective) the main artists were almost unimportant, it was all about Spector himself. Williams also covers every important aspect of Spector recorded output up to that point and how Beatles connection helped to bring him back to the forefront of music industry - for a while he seemed invincible but as we know, it will not stay like that.